With 'Batman 3' release date, 2012 will see a superhero summer showdown

Warner Bros. confirmed today that "Batman 3" (not its final title,
obviously) will come out in the summer of 2012, on July 20. In addition
to making fanboys the world over salivate with eager anticipation,
that also sets up a box-office rematch of sorts between Nolan's Batman
franchise, a DC creation, and the movies from Marvel's stable of
characters, as "The Avengers," the supergroup of superhero Marvel
movies, comes out a few months earlier (in May).

When the first round of that slugfest went down, in the summer of
2008, "The Dark Knight" trumped "Iron Man" handily, grossing $215
million more in the U.S. But "Iron Man" wasn't yet a cultural
juggernaut back then. In 2012 the landscape could look a little
different, as Marvel characters have continued to gain traction.

"Avengers" will also have the benefit of Thor, Captain America and
other characters from its film appearing in their own movies the summer
before. And all this after "Iron Man 2" looks to break the
opening-weekend record of "The Dark Knight" next week. The high-tech
weaponry, she is flying.

--Steven Zeitchik

Photo: "The Dark Knight." Credit: Warner Bros.

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The Dark Knight was propelled by the incredible buzz surrounding actor Heath Ledger's performance. The story was thoughtful, violent and dark as a great Batman movie should be but this movie belonged to the Joker. In the same vein as Jack Nicholson's performance in 1998, Ledger puts the anarchic psychopath in the story as negative aspect of the hero's own character.

It will be interesting to see how the latest supporting characters work around the shadow of the Joker.

At first I thought Iron Man 2 would be as sweet as The Dark Knight but I was so shocked because it was even better... like it was more like the best sequel of all time Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. YES!!!

The original Batman with Jack playing the Joker was 1989...not 1998...in 98' they had val kilmer, or george clooney ruining the franchise...it was horrible. but i agree with the way nicholson portrayed the character. It really pave the way for Ledger...but Ledger was phenomenal...the best role i have ever seen

If you actually listened in The dark knight you would have heard Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) make a reference to a possible villian for batman 3, while batman was checking out his new armour he asked lucius if it is protected from dogs and lucius says it is protected from cats definitely or something like that just a hunc h on that

The Dark Knight was a ground breaking film that changed the way film fans watched and approached the super hero genre. It was one of the great cinematic achievements; one of the great films of our time. The film went beyond the typical super hero plot lines and reached deeper and questioned our morality.

I am a fan of Marvel but I do not think DC and Marvel are in direct competition with each other anymore. The two companies are trying to appeal to our different senses. Their only similarity is that their characters are of the incredible. I enter a Marvel film or read a Marvel comic and I am entertained and escape for the time being from reality; surely the characters and their feats linger in my head but not the story or theme. But with "The Dark Knight", Frank Miller's Batman, Alex Ross' Superman, The Sandman, The Watchmen, these are works of art that intellectuals debate about and get intertwined with religious, political, historical and classic literary thought.

The next Batman film has a lot of pressure to become a classic. Chris Nolan has set the bar very high.

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First off there's only two directors I think of when I think of awesome batman films tim burton and christopher nolan. the 80s belonged to burton for batman and batman returns and this generation belongs to nolan for batman begins and obviously the dark knight. We've all seen what a great director can do with superheros when placed in the right hands but I say screw the nolan trilogy. why put so much pressure on this guy to hurry up and top a brillant film when god forbidd end up like sam rami's huge let down with spiderman3. I say screw all that and produce a tv series we've already seen batman take back his blockbuster status but what about on tv? The only thing we hail as gud batman tv is batman the animated series while an excellent portrail of the dark knight 12 or 13 years ago we need batman to take back the tv set by making a live action drama series as dark twisted n thrilling blending burton and nolan together on hbo

Batman 3 should have the riddler black mask and the joker as the main antagonists in the film.

Batman should be accompanied robin....

culminating in the death of robin by the black mask and the riddler who are being controled/in cahoots with the joker who is controling most of the underworld from inside arkham asylum. Batman ends up killing black mask and capturing the riddler and sending him to arkham. however, the joker escapes and is able to release some sort of poisonous gas upon the city... where- in- then-by he sets up for the fourth and final film creating penguin poison ivy bane.